Poland’s Unity Is Disrupted by Plans for President’s Interment
Thousands lined up to view the coffins of Lech and Maria Kaczynski at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on Tuesday.
WARSAW — Public discontent erupted on Tuesday for the first time in the grievous aftermath of the plane crash that claimed the lives of Poland’s president and dozens of top politicians and military leaders, as hundreds of people in Krakow protested the decision to inter the president and his wife in a crypt holding the remains of many Polish kings.
Opposition was building over the plan to lay President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria, to rest in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, which also holds the remains of leading historical figures like Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, the post-World War I leader of Poland, and Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, leader of the government-in-exile during World War II.
Those opposed to placing the often divisive Mr. Kaczynski in such august company demonstrated Tuesday night outside the Palace of Bishops, the seat of the Krakow curia. Witnesses at the protest said they were chanting “Krakow, say no!” and holding signs reading, “Is he fit to be a king?”
Sylwia Plucisz, 32, a lecturer in English who learned about the protest after joining a group of more than 20,000 on Facebook called “No to Kaczynski at Wawel,” said she thought it was wrong to bury the late president in a rarefied place for national icons.
“They are exploiting Wawel for political ends, and I don’t think it should be used in this way,” Ms. Plucisz said in a telephone interview. “Wawel is the heart of Polishness, and nobody should be buried there, especially President Kaczynski, who was a divisive person. He deserves to be buried with dignity, but not there.”
Opposition to the plan raised the specter of a state funeral on Sunday marred by protests, even as world leaders, including President Obama, are expected to attend. And the difficult process of replacing crucial members of the government could become much harder if the political atmosphere was poisoned by the dispute.
Mr. Kaczynski and his wife were devout Catholics popular among more conservative voters. But his tough stand against gay rights alienated many social liberals and his zealous drive to purge former Communists from the media and the civil service angered opponents on the left.
Mateusz Zurawik, 24, an accountant and sometime political blogger, said that burying the president at Wawel would glorify someone who in life was far less popular than he has become in death.
“Burying him there would be overestimating him and smacks of megalomania,” he said. “This is too big a thing for any president. He doesn’t deserve to be there. It is not the will of the Polish people.”
But many Poles supported the idea as a fitting tribute. “If Sikorski is buried at Wawel, then why not Lech Kaczynski? He died as a president while performing his duties and not while going on holiday,” said Aleksander Jablonowski, who stood outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw on Tuesday night.
The president’s death on Saturday morning in a plane crash in western Russia that killed 96 people had prompted exceptional unity across Poland in the days immediately after the accident.
But privately, supporters of Mr. Kaczynski’s nationalist-conservative Law and Justice Party grumbled that not all the sympathetic outpouring was sincere. Opponents of the president bit their tongues in the face of a national tragedy, in which members from several parties across the political spectrum were killed, along with the flight crew, the president’s security detail, clergy members and senior generals.
Wawel is a national landmark, where kings once held their coronations, and is the cathedral of the Krakow Archdiocese, where Pope John Paul II was once archbishop. The decision to inter the Kaczynskis there was approved by John Paul’s longtime personal secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the current archbishop.
“I trust that the entire society will accept this decision with understanding,” Cardinal Dziwisz said Tuesday, according to the Polish news service PAP. “During such occasions, we should unite, and never divide. Divisions serve no one.”
The body of Poland’s first lady was flown to Warsaw on Tuesday. As with the arrival of her husband’s remains on Sunday, mourners lined the route from the airport to the Presidential Palace, throwing flowers at the hearse carrying her coffin. Their bodies lay in state in the palace for Poles to pay their respects.
A special joint session of the lower and upper houses of Parliament was also held to honor the dead, with photographs of the members of Parliament killed in the crash placed on their seats.